Tuesday, December 11, 2007

The IAEA is meeting with Iran to investigate how traces weapons of grade uranium came to be found in at a university in Tehran. If the IAEA would just call the State Dept. staffers that produced our NIE, they would no doubt explain that it was just part of the ongoing effort for civilian nuclear power. This from Fox News:

Iranian and U.N. nuclear officials began a new round of talks here on Monday, this time to probe the source of weapons-grade uranium that was found at Tehran's university, the official IRNA news agency reported.

It was not clear from the report how or when the weapons-grade uranium was discovered at the Technology faculty of the state university.. . . The talks also follow an IAEA report last month which stated Iran had been generally truthful about its past uranium enrichment activities. Much of the 10-page report focused on Iran's black-market procurements and past development of uranium enrichment technology.

But the talks Monday were related to a separate issue -- the university find. It's believed this was the first time the incident was discussed.

The IAEA's mandate obliges it to investigate a country's nuclear activities and probe all suspicious findings, such as the traces at Tehran university.

In 2003 and 2004, the IAEA revealed other incidents where weapons-grade uranium was found elsewhere in the country, but Iran at the times said those traces came from imported equipment that had been contaminated before it was purchased.

The parts suspected of being contaminated in those incidents were believed to have come from Pakistan.

. . . While Iran has responded to many IAEA questions about past nuclear activities such as P-1 and P-2 centrifuges, a technology used to enrich uranium, some issues still remain unresolved, such as the university contamination.